


Foreign Relations

by shadeofwrong



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, blends both??
Genre: Cold War, Crossover, Gen, Spies & Secret Agents, Undercover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 02:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5768203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadeofwrong/pseuds/shadeofwrong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Galahad is sent on a recovery mission in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union. Another Kingsman agent, Tristan, has gone missing, and must be found before any information on their organization can be leaked. As he makes headway into his investigation, he crosses paths with the infamous Black Widow, but maybe their goals aren't so terribly different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foreign Relations

**Author's Note:**

> I apparently can't post anything to this site that isn't Cold War spy related, but this is something I've had on the backburner for a while. Part one is actually a thread from DWRP edited down into fic form, with full permission from the other player, plus permission to branch out and finish it solo. The rest will be coming soon and I hope you enjoy. One day I will post something that isn't pre-canon Harry Hart.
> 
> I may also ship this a little. We'll see where the chapters take us.

In the early days of the Iron Curtain's fall, a surge of emotions raced across the western world: Fear, doubt, hope, joy. On Europe's surface, it felt like a dawn rising and casting out a dark age. Relatives reunited, new alliances formed, and secrets were seemingly brought out to air freely.

However, a few layers beneath public knowledge, government agencies had been cast into turmoil. Moles and sleeper agents were stranded, some vanished completely. The game was about to change, and with KGB members going rogue and the CIA rearing up on a high horse, the rest of the espionage world needed to find a new foothold.

Though the government didn't really restrict them, the agents of Kingsman were no different. Merlin lost contact with Tristan, who had a long established cover into the Kremlin, not long before he was due to make his way back to British soil. His exit intel could shape the new way for them to do business, but he missed every check in.

They chose Galahad for the search and extract mission. He had experience with the crumbling state of affairs for the Soviets, if only because he was one of the newer Kingsman agents, a few years under his belt.

It wasn't his first time crossing over to Russia, but the anxiety of a rookie zipped up his spine as he walked casually through the dank streets of Moscow. He showed none of it, his hands casually in the pockets of his peacoat and an umbrella tucked lazily under his arm. The gravity of his assignment weighed heavily on him-- none of his missions before this had such high stakes.

Still, even the way he puffed on the cigarette between his lips read a calm gentility as he looked up at the dingy apartment block where Tristan set up his cover. Harry cased it the whole morning. No going back now. 

If anywhere was bound to be the confluence of trepidations for both past and future, Moscow surely ranked high on the list. Harry could almost smell it in the air ; the oppressive veil over the city that before felt impenetrable had been swept away like a dirty tablecloth. Though it became easier to breathe, all of the outside elements the ruling Party worked so painstakingly to keep away rushed in. Even for the average Russian, it had to be as dizzying as stepping up into the pure oxygen of mountain air.

_“Vy sluchajno ne zablyudilis?”  
Any chance you're lost?_

A woman's voice pulled Harry right out of his reverie, and with that empty, polite phrase, her eyes took careful stock of him, where a weapon could be, his posture. He turned more quickly than he liked to when trying to keep cover, but she caught him off guard. That alone disturbed him-- no one catches him off guard. Still, he chuckled, feigning slight embarrassment at getting spooked in broad daylight. He flicked his cigarette into a nearby gutter. Harry never smoked around people who didn't, and it would be rude to assume anything about the manners of this woman. Her profession concerned him more.

_“Apologies. My Russian is... not so good.”_

True, to an extent. Harry's mastery of the language was shaky at best, but better than the fumbling tourist act he gives now.

_“I'm, ah, visiting. A friend, he lives here.”_

He gestured to the apartment building behind them and pretended not to notice her eyes on him. Harry wasn't so arrogant as to be flattered, not on the field like this. Fortunately his clothes were thick, and his main weapon hidden in plain sight. She smiled, a brief twitch with a tilt to her head. His speech as accented, subtle, rounding words and sounds that would otherwise come sharp and edged.

“English?” It was an offer and a perhaps a hint. His act was a good, and anyone else would have bought it easily, eagerly. He motioned behind her and she didn't follow the gesture because you never turn your back on someone you don't trust. 

Harry gave a bashful, almost genuine smile when she guessed his origins. It may be easy to spot a tourist, but he took the hint with caution-- a normal proletariat, barred from proper education, wouldn't pinpoint his accent in one go.

“However did you guess?” His tone was self deprecating, but he remained alert and followed her eyes as she scanned the street rather than take his cue. 

“Just got a little lucky,” she replied coyly. Her attention scraped along the surrounding street; a few people walking hurriedly on the other side, a boy in an old ushanka. Her only concern would be the man on far corner of the road, slowly puffing at a cigarette. Harry almost scoffed, but it didn't reach his lips. 

“I should say I'm the lucky one, finding an English speaker in residential Moscow right of the bat.” He noticed the same gentleman earlier. A real chain smoker to still be hanging around. But which of them was he watching, if he's watching at all? The woman's eyes moved back to him, and for a moment, there's a knot in between her brows; she took a breath, slid her hands from her pockets, purposefully fumbled with a key.

“You need a key to get into the building. Want me to let you in?” 

It came too conveniently. If she got him off the streets, she could easily try and kill him, or whatever they'd done to Tristan. Most of Kingsman had an antiquated view of the ideal spy, but if Harry gave the Reds credit for something, it's diversity in their rankings. Man or woman, he's fought the best of both. Indoctrination, apparently, knew no sex.

“Oh, do you live here, too?” Feigned surprise, a curious tilt of the head. “You've come at just the right time, I think my friend may be out at the moment.”

“Looks like I have. Come on, then.” 

Pivoting on her heel, she turned - perhaps to the on-looker, not entirely a bold gesture, but it was a back turned, even if she tossed a glance over her shoulder to see if he followed. 

“It's easier to check if someone's home by knocking on their door than staring at their window.”

The conversation was already far more friendly than most he'd had behind the Iron Curtain in the past. Though, of course, that could be an effect of it falling. Harry couldn't help but mentally mark down every note of suspicion this woman raised anyway. There was no harm in being observant, after all. It was how she managed to call his lie, though there's another prepared just as easily.

“You'd think. He didn't warn me about the extra security, just said to meet him out front. It's a bit more of a task for us westerners to wait out in the cold.”

Harry didn't betray his surprise when she volunteered to go first. It gave him the advantage, both of being at her back and to escape easily if he needed to. Though focusing on finding Tristan remained the highest objective, she was starting to make him more than a little intrigued. Maybe that's the trap, but he stepped forward anyway. Better to take his chances in a warm building than a cold street.

His advantage was her disadvantage, even as she strained to focus on her periphery, or listened for his steps behind her as she twisted the key into the lock, swung the door open and moved inside before stepping aside to hold it open for him.

“This? It's new, recently added. He might have forgotten to tell you.” A wry curve to her lips at his remark, and an exhaled breath subtly clouding the brisk air. “Things are changing, that's all. But not the cold. That stays the same.” 

Idle remarks, talk about the government, the weather. Meaningless, or let him make more notes. Harry didn't dare to take a step ahead of her once they're inside. The apartment complex wasn't much warmer, but he'd take it.

“Well, we can't have everything, can we?” No acting needed to say that; the dry tone was entirely Harry's own. He took his hands out of his pockets-- slowly-- and flexed his cold fingers to get the blood running properly again. The lobby was small and dim, lit by the light streaming from the open door, and from the staircase windows above them. 

“No, I suppose not.” Her gaze fell down to the motion of his hands, perhaps too quickly, previous ease and friendliness briefly replaced by sharpened awareness. “What floor does he live on?”

Harry looked up the stairs but scanned corners for cameras along the way. Full coverage on the lobby, as to be expected. The stairs might not be so safe, but the instinctual ladies first wouldn't do him any favors here.

“Third floor. Aleksandr Ivanovich, you might know him.”

Harry took a deep breath through his nose and made his way to the stairwell, kept his stride confident, kept the woman talking.

“Didn't catch your name, by the way.”

The stairwells were camera free; and when he walked so did she, angled herself just a step behind him and to the right - visible to his peripheral sight. It's on purpose, as though she was still interested in upholding their trivial talk.

“It's Natasha.” No surname; there were plenty of Natashas around; it gave little away, as little as any pseudonym would have. “And I do. We're neighbours - he watched my cat once.”

“Really? He's always been more of a dog person.”

If she was lying, she thought of them with admirable efficiency, but there was no cat, not in any of Tristan's records, anyway. Harry's more immediate concern, however,was that she hadn't stopped following him. Stay calm. Stay polite.

Keep her talking, just as much as she was playing keep him talking. Ironically, perhaps there was neutrality in their method.  
“And you?” she asked.

Harry's eyes flickered to her hands; her fingers were curled, nails pinching skin. 

“Oliver.” Not too common of a name, but not too unusual either. “It's good to meet you, Natasha. I hate to think of how much more frozen I would have been if you hadn't come along, in fact.”

“You get used to it,” Natasha responded much more dryly and quickly than she had so far. The cold, she meant. Sometimes it seemed like the people were formed by it, a reflection or a reaction to the chill that could seep into bone and stay there. Maybe it would never leave, no matter any changes that converged around it.

Harry offered another smile over his shoulder containing the barest tinge of sympathy he couldn't remove from himself. Something was up, but the way she stayed in his line of sight didn't fit into the rest of this encounter. Was it a slip up, or was she giving him leeway? Neither made much sense, but rather than figure that out, Harry steeled himself as they approached the third floor. He needed to get into Tristan's flat, no matter what. If by some miracle Natasha really was a civilian, he had amnesia darts on hand, but things never ran that smoothly. The Cold War would have ended a long time ago if they did. He took his umbrella in one hand from under his arm and swung it innocuously back and forth by his side, but his grip on the handle was iron.

The climb up the steps could have taken half a minute or half an hour, but it felt like even longer. Harry stepped into the third floor hallway, head buzzing as if he emerged from the depths of a lake just in time to gasp for air. He turns around to face Natasha properly, and when he smiled, this time it didn't even attempt to reach his eyes.

“Well. Here we are.” 

_Are we quite done?_

When he turned to face her head on, Natasha moved, risked the quick action and pivoted herself towards the door with a single stride, barred his access to the apartment entirely, the door at her back. It might have even looked comical, with their difference in height, but her heel rooted firmly into the concrete of the floor. As much as she saw a change to his smile, her gaze sets sharp and cold, trained steel and hands hung loose at her side.

“Here we are,” she repeated, echoed the sentiment with something wry crawling up her tone instead of curving her lips. “You're not going in here.”A nod, tossed to the door behind him, her spine tense and heavy in anticipation. “In there.”

Harry instinctively jumped back when Natasha rushed forward and lifted his umbrella in defense. When she barred the door instead of attacking him, it admittedly threw him for a moment. She really didn't cover much of the door, but even if she reached the ceiling, Harry had no intention of deviating from his plan as of yet. He raised a brow when she starts giving orders. 

“Your invitation is flattering, really, but I have business behind this door.”

Harry absolutely noticed how beautiful Natasha was; the Soviets practically made it a requirement for the women who joined their special forces. Nothing lowered the guard of the American government quicker than a pretty face. Harry, on the other hand, barely found it to be a relevant observation. Right now, the both of them operated as tools best suited for dangerous work, nothing more. Kingsman's integrity and possibly Tristan's life were on the line, and Harry worried more about the skills hidden in her clenched fists and behind her cold eyes. She was better than a simple honeypot game.

He moved in closer and grabbed the door handle, incidentally blocking Natasha's escape back to the stairs. This pinned her closer to the wall, which is a risky move, but it was clear they were done with the masquerade.

“You were watching him.”

Right next door. For how long? And why didn't Tristan notice?

“Unless you can give me a good reason to go anywhere else, I'll be opening this up now, whether you get out of the way or not.” His eyes cast downward to meet hers, unblinking and no longer exuding his previously cordial air. Harry thinly veiled the threat, perhaps as a last drop of courtesy.

Her brow quirked, about to weave a response when he advanced and it momentarily caught her off guard, and instincts raise, caught between the urge to move back, the inability to, and the rebelling discomfort of being this cornered which, all things considered, she managed to veil behind a glare and a distinctly set jaw.  
Her chin raised, unyielding, eyes cast up to seize his. 

“You want a reason? If you go through that door, you might as well just hand yourself over to KGB.” She skipped a beat, weighted like lead against her tongue. “With me in tow.” She reached to curl her fingers around his wrist; her other hand clenched, and her mind bristled with awareness; where the umbrella is, or how she will push off the wall if he moves any further. She meant this, whatever sliver of truth that could come spilling out of her throat. “And I can't let you do that.” Her tone is low, hushed, and lips curl mirthlessly up. “I'm not exactly your enemy, but we can do this the easy way, or the hard way.” Pointedly, she dropped her eyes to his hand on the handle, before returning to look up at him. “Your choice.”

“I assure you, I can handle a few bugs.” Innocuous sounding out of context, but Harry dropped his voice anyway. With his luck so far half of the floor would need to pop out for errands all at once. 

“So could your other agent.” The remark slipped cold and pointed, further implication left unvoiced (and where is he now? what do you think happened?). This entire exchange was riddled with risks, made worse in their urgency. Her words pierce Harry, as intended and more than he'd like. For the first time since they met, his face truly fell, and a glint of anger passed across his features. Quick as a shadow, it vanished, sinking back beneath the surface. In his rush to either confront or escape this woman, the thought of checking for wiretaps and cameras completely slipped his mind. Harry mentally chastised himself; he should have known better than to lose focus that easily. However, he didn't rush to thank her for the reminder just yet. Tristan missed something, but he wouldn't. He wouldn't let his fellow Kingsman's work go in vain, either. 

He gripped the doorknob more tightly when Natasha wraps her fingers around his wrist. Small as they are, they tamped down hard against his skin. Her strength didn't surprise him, but the story she spun did. Russian agents rarely played with their food like this. They devoured it and vanished behind Kremlin enforced walls.

Of course, tactics changed. It was the essence of Galahad's mission now. Defection and lies both carried benefits for government based spies, and he needed to learn more before he could discern which one Natasha wanted. Trusting her would be stupid, but listening to her was only a risk, and a mission of this caliber practically demanded taking it. The first of many, in fact.

“My enemy's enemy is my friend?” That old adage was loaded with caveats. Regardless, Harry stepped back from the door and moved to the side to let Natasha take the lead. His umbrella rested at his side like a disarmed shotgun, but the muscles in his arm coiled like a spring, ready to swing it back into action if necessary. Her grip slipped away as soon as he moved back, and Natasha moved towards the opposite door, removed the key to it from her pocket and when the lock clicked, she swung it open with a posture that implied expectation. Her own frame was taut, as though attempting to anticipate the variety of action he could undertake and preparing to respond accordingly.

“We'll have to see that, won't we?” Below, through the subtle echo of the staircase, the lobby door swung open and shut and in the breathless tension. _Tick tock._

Harry watched Natasha more balefully now as she attended to the door, but he was just as ready to spring as she was. Just because she spied on Tristan didn't make her flat any more secure, especially if she was a possible defector. Bullets didn't mow them down as soon as she opened it, so already he'd made worse decisions. The noise from the lobby, however, alarmed him just as much as it did her. He nodded for her to enter the flat. He'd handle this. A display of power was in order, as was a way to exorcise the tension curling up inside him.  
She nearly scoffed, folded her arms instead and leans on the frame of the door with head tilted right. She wouldn't be jumping to intervene if something did break out, but she sure wouldn't be diving out of it either.  
“Oh, go ahead. I'm pretty sure someone ran out of cigarettes.”  
Harry positioned himself next to the cased opening that led back to the stairwell. He pressed his back against the wall, still fully visible to Natasha, but out of sight to anyone climbing to the third floor. He heard the footsteps of the man ascending closer, and carefully started to unscrew the handle of his umbrella from the base. He only gave Natasha a sidelong glance. If she wanted to be in the line of fire, that was her business. The handle finally came loose, just as the smoking man reaches their floor.

_“Agent Romano--”_

In the time it took him to start asking Natasha a question and to set one foot forward through the doorway, Harry pressed a small button on the rim of the umbrella handle. A thin but sharp blade noiselessly sprang out, and Harry quickly turned and plunged it into the man's neck with a decisive stab. Whatever words he prepared to speak turn to bloody gurgles, and Harry held the knife in place until the body went limp. He pulled the blade free but grabbed the man by the collar and helped him sink to the ground softly, rather than make a suspicious thud. Harry then took a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped the knife clean before sheathing it again.

“Romanova?” he guessed from the syllables the smoker managed. Once his umbrella hung from his wrist again, he started to drag the body toward Natasha's door. “I hope you have room for one more guest.”

Her mouth sets thin, at his correct assumption, and it would be her only confirmation as she stepped forward to grab the body's legs with a sigh that sounds too distinctly like a Russian curse.

“Two is company, but three's a crowd, right? Second door to the left, there's a spare room.” She lifted the legs; dragging might have been a muted sound, but better for there to be no sound at all. Luckily, the blood was being absorbed by his layers, instead of trailing on the ground. Harry doesn't miss a beat and stands up straighter, moving his grip from the waist to under the armpits until the body suspended above the floor, weight evenly distributed between them.

Once they get the body inside, Harry found the room and placed it on the bed before draping a blanket over it. For the first time since he entered the building, he let out a long sigh of his own, and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. They didn't have video capability yet, but the photo transmissions must tell one hell of a story already. Though one less threat trailed him now, a body puts a tighter timeline on things. Just as Tristan failed to report in, soon this man would too. Harry returned his attention to Natasha, and got straight to the point.  
“Why are you helping me?  
A curve to her lips, not quite a smile.  
“Things are changing.” She'd said that before; and it was evident all around them, with the fall of the Curtain, the change of regimes. “We're all caught in the transition.”  
The Soviets handled change like a wave of extinction. And what they were good at was cutting weaknesses away before they could develop fully. Subconsciously, perhaps she was suspecting something from them. The increased surveillance, and the increased check-ins she was required to do. Naturally, she didn't want to become a successfully eliminated target of the KGB and maybe this thing, this meeting was just her attempt to save her own skin.  
“And I'm not helping you yet. But I can. I know where the information your man was looking for is. And I know where they're keeping him, and how to get to him. But this will have to be a deal.” 

How many people in their field were plowed down under the rubble of the Soviet states? Tristan wasn't Harry's only ally to disappear in the past few months, just as other intelligence groups scrambled to cover their tracks as much as the KGB. So no shock crossed his features when Romanova reveals nothing charitable in her efforts. Only a fool would believe that, anyway.

“Your honesty must mean you think highly of me,” Harry drawled, but his features shift again when she dangled the fish hook of information at last. Biting down immediately tempted him. She said Tristan was being kept-- so he was alive. Harry set his jaw tightly, and resisted pursing his lips. Kingsman agents didn't crack easily, but no one could survive the KGB's interrogations indefinitely. His timeline, if he could believe her, just shrank a bit more. Of course, that could just be the lure Natasha set out, so he stood his ground. She shrugged; she would much rather him take her truths as a compliment than a sign of her discomfort, or of fear.

“I've seen your training.” Kingsman training. It was as much a reason as any; this wasn't her only chance to disappear, but it could be the quicker option. And a high risk one, considering she was offering to break into the KGB and hand over secrets. High risk, high reward. Or something like that. 

“And what do you expect my end of the deal to be?” Harry asked, not looking away from her for a second. How many times during this meeting, the one she had danced towards in a series of pirouettes that teetered on rushed, had she paused to weigh her options? To reconsider and question the gravity of her actions? Certain facts she knew; the entity she had been tied to hardly screwed around with empty threats. So if there was a potential, then the danger of it should be taken to heart. 

“I want a one way ticket out of Moscow.” Maybe she based this on the life-for-life cliche. She didn't scare easy, but she knew what they are capable of; it would be stupid to ignore the rolling unease. “I heard a rumor, and I'd rather not stick around to see if it's true.” It was as much as she could say, or wanted to say, or should.

While Romanova only placed two lives on the scale, Harry's thoughts added considerably more weight to the situation. Recovering Tristan and his intel opened the possibilities for Kingsman to keep effectively protecting thousands of people at a time, but how many more would be endangered if he facilitated a KGB operative going rogue?

“There are plenty of rumors these days. I'm sure the CIA would love to hear them, especially from a defector.” Dismissive as he sounded, Harry didn't move. His wit stalled for time. It would be simple enough to move her, drop her as soon as he crosses the borders, but if Kingsman training served as her insurance, he wanted his own. “You say you know where my colleague is. I need proof.”

She scoffed, as though his first remark was entirely obscene; as it stood, if a Soviet, with patriotism sewn into sinews young, could question her own regime, she would have little faith in most others. Things change and with time perhaps they would for her, but the idea sounds dry, at best. Maybe it was her still relative youth, lined with the lowered expectations her own country had fed them all towards the Americans.

“What makes you think I didn't consider them first?” It was a veiled question, an empty one, the one that didn't warrant an answer because she stepped back into the hall, ventured further into the flat, into the kitchen. Her footsteps are feather-light like a dancer's, focused on listening behind her, just in case he got any new ideas. Harry waited until Natasha turns around to crack a half smile in spite of himself. He shouldn't have let her preference of one organization over another flatter him so easily, but even Arthur liked to subtly brag on occasion about their superiority to their "cousins" (to put it in the old man's horribly dated terms). Regardless, Harry kept on her heels. Letting her out of sight for the barest second could send him right back to square one, or worst case scenario, a shallow grave. 

She dislodged a board from the window sill, and though not much was there, Natasha beelined her way back to the Kingsman, the manila folder extended to him, tied with red string.. They weren't extensive reports, but between the blacked out lines, there was a location, a drop, a short update. Three photographs of the prisoner, with time stamps on the corners bearing dates of two days ago. 

“They've moved him to a different location two days ago, twenty minute drive out of Moscow, north. Still alive, but running out of time. Three, four days more at most.” The implication was leaden against her tongue. Further from the city, less witnesses, wider forests to keep their secrets buried. 

Harry took the envelope in his gloved hands and swiftly opened it, and his face slowly turned to stone with each new page he flipped through. The photos weren't of the highest quality, but he recognized Tristan behind broken glasses and blood caked across his face. Harry pushed his own pair up the bridge of his nose again, silently snapping duplicates of the pictures with the camera hidden in the frames. His face set with grim determination as Natasha spoke. The timeline checked out, and now he needed to place his decision onto it. Harry slipped the evidence back into the envelope and squared his shoulders. He looked up at Natasha again, grim determination hewing lines on his face.

“You do realize that if I extract you, there's no further obligation from myself or my organization. Once the border is crossed, you're on your own. If you try and contact us, you'll be completely disavowed.”

“Wouldn't have it any other way,” Natasha replied cooly, leaning against the doorway. After a moment: “Burn the file. And we can't stay here for much longer.” She nodded to the bedroom where the body lay soaking the sheets with blood. She knew how important a missed check-in was. Harry's very presence in Moscow confirmed it.

Harry recognized a bargaining tactic in her casual posture. Act in charge of the situation, and even the physical suggestion alone can help you come out on top of a deal. He was no stranger to it, but right now it irritated him anyway. The ticking of the clock on the apartment wall sounded louder than it did before, also serving to put him on edge, but Harry attributed it all the the sudden squeeze of stress around his chest now that Tristan had become reachable, but more broken than Harry ever saw him before. At least Romanova seems amenable to his terms-- for now.

He dug his lighter from his pocket and flicked it open with a trace of fury, but still carefully used the ruse function rather than setting the timer for its concealed hand grenade. Once the flames touched the photos inside the envelope, the acrid smell of burning plastic started to fill the room. Harry doubled back to the bedroom where the dead man rested and placed the fiery papers on top of the sheets that covered him as if striking up a funeral pyre. Hopefully Natasha didn't plan on packing her bedding before taking off. Harry popped up the collar of his coat in preparation to trek back out into the cold and briskly made his way towards the complex hall.

“I have a car ten blocks west of here. Do not walk on the same side of the street as me until I get in, understand?” He cast a baleful look at Tristan's door-- he should use the grenade on the place to wipe any traces that his colleague didn't take care of, but his companion was right. No time.

“Ten blocks west.” She confirmed, and there's a pinch of something incredulous, almost amused. “I've done this before.” She reached into her pockets, pulled out a pair of leather gloves of her own, and quickly descended down the stairs. Her next words, amid the cold and the calculation she had so far provided, came a pinch softer. “Let's go.” Once they stepped outside, there would be no going back. 

Long past hesitation, Harry nimbly retraced his way back out onto the street. In a matter of twenty minutes at the most, the atmosphere had changed, though it was entirely in his head. Hyper-awareness seized him, and he absorbed every possible threat in sight. His eyes skimmed rooftops, faces of pedestrians and of people in passing cars, all while making sure Natasha followed him.

While their walk up the steps back at the apartment felt like a lifetime, it only seemed like seconds before Harry reached his car, an old Moskvitch sedan he rented under a fake name. Only a little relief came from sitting behind the wheel; he was safer than out on the street, but not by much. While he waited for Romanova, his finger already positioned on the button to unlock the passenger door, his free hand stuck the key in the ignition.

He glanced into the rear view mirror, searching for her on the street. His eyes found her as she crossed the road and threw a final glance around before pulling the passenger's door open. The interior isn't much warmer, not yet, and the heater's subdued rattle is still loud enough to be grating if listened to for too long. Once she joined him, entering the car with the confidence a stranger wouldn't show, he stayed silent for a moment as the heater creaked to life. Harry pulled away from the sidewalk before Natasha even fully closed the door, but other than that, he kept his driving cautious. Should the fire he set get any worse, it couldn't look like they're fleeing, even from this far away. Even if it didn't, getting pulled over now would just lead to an even bigger mess. When he started down the street, their backs safe, judging by another look in the mirror, he spoke, though still keeps his eyes on the road.

“Harry.” He offered his name less begrudgingly than he thought he might. However, she had a point-- this wasn't her first job, either. For the sake of cooperation, and as long as the terms were respected, he could treat her like an equal, at least in regards to skill. “I apologize if I came off as condescending. While we're together we may as well be civil.”

She looked at him, momentarily incredulous. It should be silly, thinking that real names put them on common ground, but she acknowledged him with a soft nod. She turned back to look at the road in front of them with a curving smirk. Their back is clear but it didn't stop her from checking the mirrors as well.

“Zelenograd. That's where we need to go.” A beat, and she sat on his apology in mild amusement. There weren't a lot of apologies in their work, even if it was only for civility. “People underestimate. It's useful, usually.”

Harry roughly mapped the path to Zelenograd in his head; the most distant district of the Moscow oblast, not far from the Sheremetyevo airport. From the viewpoint of geographical strategy, an excellent place to hide an international prisoner. Out of the Kremlin's hair, but close enough to touch, with easy transport if necessary. A slight _grimp_ of leather tightening against leather broke the relative silence in the car when Harry's gloved hands flexed against the wheel.

“Usually,” he echoed with slight amusement. Kingsman agents exploited people's expectations down to the marrow, part of the reason they managed to stay so secret. “How long have you known about us?” He didn't want to believe Tristan would give up anything vital. Besides, an exit plan took years of planning, not just a few weeks. Natasha stared out the window, and her eyes caught on the grey scenery, the overcast sky. The cold still lingered on her skin.

“For some time now. We know you don't have a leash. Not one any government holds, at least.” Even with their current agreement to work together, each time silence fell again, it felt leaden against the air, cycled around only by the hum of the slow heater. She shifted in her seat and it creaked as she turned an interested glance to him. “But there has to be a leash.” That's what she was taught. That was what was wired into her instincts.

For a good minute, Harry focused solely on the road, silent. Maybe the olive branch hadn't been the wisest decision after all. How much of Moscow knew about Kingsman? Certainly not the majority of their intelligence community. Harry and most other agents had put the hard squeeze on countless Kremlin spies until they've turned blue, but they always believed they'd suffered at the hands of MI6, maybe CIA, and even the KGB would have a difficult time actually capturing one of them alive. Something deeper danced around the edges of this mission, and Romanova hadn't fully escaped from those waters yet.

Part of him considered pulling over somewhere out of sight, prioritizing these worrisome developments over his original mission and extracting that elusive information from her on his own. Kingsman agents protected its secrecy at the cost of their own lives. He could almost hear Arthur saying it in his ear. It was his lack of a leash, however, that stopped him. If Natasha wanted out, she was nowhere near the top of the ladder. He would get a few vague leads at best, resulting in the loss of Tristan and their intel. The secret of Kingsman was only worth a damn if it could protect people.

“Does there?”

The virtue of loyalty had practically been branded onto Harry's brain as well, but he never allowed it to be blind. He let the question hang in the air as they moved out of the city's center and towards the more rural outskirts.


End file.
